Synthetic biopolymers such as oligonucleotides play a pivotal role in many fields such as molecular biology, forensic science, and medical diagnostics. In recent years, the demand for synthetically produced oligonucleotides has risen markedly because many genetic research projects require large number of oligonucleotides as PCR primers or gene probes. For instances, genetic polymorphism identification and scoring, STS content mapping, radiation hybrid mapping, primer walking in DNA sequencing, the Human Genome Project, and others, all require a large variety of oligonucleotides. With the emergence of massively parallel analysis technologies such as DNA microarrays, new demands for large variety of oligonucleotides have evolved.
With the completion of sequencing the genome of model organisms and the human genome project, a large number of gene specific probes or PCR primers are needed to amplify all the genes in an organism for studying the functions, cellular roles, and other characteristics of genes. For instances, Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly, has around 14,000 genes and C. elegans has around 18,000 genes. To amplify all the Drosophila genes in its genome requires around 28,000 PCR primers. Current throughput of available oligonucleotide synthesizer technologies take a synthesizer about 6 months to complete the synthesis of all the gene specific PCR primers for the above organisms